Compass Rose (19 page)

Elsie was setting the table for supper. She laid a fork down and straightened it with her fingertips. She said, “Are you saying that you, conversely, have a lifetime of sweetness that you intend to make up for?”

Miss Perry laughed. She stopped when her rib hurt. “Elsie, dear, I was making my way toward an apology, but you have trumped me.”

M
ay’s life was immeasurably richer once she became one of the three crucial women in Rose’s life. May couldn’t bring herself to have another conversation with Elsie, but she’d always liked Mary Scanlon. She felt grateful for the part Mary had played in handling Dick—bullying him with hugs that were part strong-arm tactic, part bosomy squeezes. That first time Mary had done it, Dick had given in to a combination of Mary’s physical strength and her flood of argument. True, she’d added some hugs and kisses then, and May had counted them small payment for having baby Rose in her own kitchen.

As Rose grew to middling size, she would run from Mary’s pickup into May’s arms. If Dick was at home, Mary hugged Dick and jollied Rose along. “And here’s your father, Rose, home from the sea.” If Rose needed more jollying, Mary would add, “Not every girl has a handsome sailor for her da,” and hug him. “He’s a bit shy now, Rose, but he’s dying to see you.”

If any other woman were to cling to Dick like that … If May had come on Mary alone with Dick carrying on like that … When May was alone and thought of Mary Scanlon’s long arms and flying red hair whirling around Dick, May had to cut the thought off. Sometimes. Other times they wrapped their arms around each other and floated toward a vanishing point in May’s mind. And then it was gone. Easy as that.

For a while Rose called Dick “da.” She said to May, “Have you been on my da’s boat? All the way out to sea? When I’m bigger, can I go on da’s boat?”

May thought Rose’s saying “da” was a good idea. She wondered if Mary had chosen it as a smart compromise between Rose’s saying “dad” or saying “Dick.” Perhaps it was just part of Mary’s Irishness,
or perhaps Mary’s way of putting another mark on Rose. It didn’t matter—it kept things in place.

When Tom found out, he was in college at URI, still popping into the house when it suited him. The first time he actually saw Rose he’d sat and watched May and Rose make tea for the teddy bear and two dolls. When Mary Scanlon came to take Rose away, Mary didn’t bat an eye. She gave Tom a hug and said, “Give Tom a kiss, Rose, and then we’re off. Good Lord, Tom, are you raising a beard? Never mind, Rose, there’s a nice bit of cheek right there.” Rose hid her face in Mary’s skirt, then turned around.

Tom held out his hand and said, “Can you shake hands, Rose? I’m Tom.” Rose stood on one foot and held out her hand. Mary laughed. May held her breath.

After Mary and Rose left, May sat down. She said, “Your father told me he told you.”

“How old is she now? Six? He took his time. And he didn’t say much. He sure didn’t say you got down on the floor and played dolls with her.”

May said, “Don’t poke fun.”

“I’m not. I’m just … I’m just catching up; I’m just taking it in. So you’re doing okay, then.” He hit his palm on his forehead. “Well, duh.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry. I’m goofing around. I think it’s great, the way you’re … doing it this way.”

May wished she had Mary Scanlon’s quick hugs and kisses in her. She said, “You were good. The way you asked her to shake hands.”

Charlie was another matter.

After Dick told him, he didn’t speak to his father for years. He graduated from URI and then from the URI graduate school of oceanography. He stayed on as a research fellow and spent a lot of time at sea on the R.V.
Trident
. May missed him terribly. He only phoned home if he knew Dick was at sea. When Charlie was in port he would ask May to lunch over in Saunderstown, a dozen miles away.

It pained May that Charlie seemed to have become as grim and stubborn as Dick—as Dick had been when he was building
Spartina
. It pained her that her family had flown apart. Every so often she blamed herself. If she hadn’t taken to Rose the way she had …

May’s life had been Dick and the two boys. Now it was Rose, with Mary Scanlon as a bonus, and Phoebe. It was for Rose and Mary and Phoebe that May made her garden bigger after Rose became old enough to help. Mary accepted some fresh corn and squash as a gift, and then asked if she could buy a basket for Sawtooth, whatever was ripe any given week. Mary said, “There’s one or two who eat there who can tell the difference.”

Phoebe liked the way the garden looked. She said, “Someone should paint a picture. Call it
Abbondanza.
” Phoebe had taken to throwing in an Italian word or two, about the time she started referring to Mr. Salviatti as Piero. May didn’t think much about it—Phoebe called Mr. Aldrich Jack—until Phoebe brought her a dozen figs. “Piero sent these. He remembers you admiring his fig trees in winter.”

May said, “Well, be sure to thank him next time you see him. I didn’t think he comes down off his hill all that often. But I guess he looks in at Sawtooth.”

“I see him at his house,” Phoebe said. “In a way, it’s you who gave him the idea. You said that you thought one of his angels, the big one, should be looking out to sea. So he asked us up to see if our company could build a base for it down by the town dock. And then he thought he might commission a new one. We went to Westerly to look at the work one of the younger sculptors is doing. It’s all still in the planning stages, but he said, right in front of all those men, would I consider posing as the model? Of course, I laughed. I play a lot of tennis but I’m not a young girl. And then I had to blush. He made me stand on a block of stone, and they all talked in Italian. So just for now the sculptor is coming up to make a few sketches at Piero’s house. Oh, May, you look horrified. Really, it’s just … I mean, I’m not posing nude.”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to May. May wasn’t sure what it was that bothered her. It wasn’t just that she suspected that Phoebe had liked standing up on a block of stone while a bunch of men looked at her and talked Italian. And it wasn’t Phoebe pretending to be a Catholic angel. Not just that, either.

May said, “Mr. Salviatti means to put this up by the town dock?”

“Yes. He wants to do something for the community, something
that shows he cares for the fishermen. We’ll call it
The Angel of the Harbor of Refuge
. Of course, all the people taking the ferry to Block Island will see it, too, and Piero likes the idea that a larger public will see what sort of art Westerly does.”

May remembered when the Perryville School started. Some of the people wanted to call it Miss Perry’s School or Miss Perry’s Academy. Miss Perry said no. She’d told Dick there was no helping the fact that the village of Perryville was named for a distant relative who’d been a hero of the War of 1812. She herself felt constrained by the old New England rhyme, “Fools’ names and fools’ faces / Often appear in public places.” May imagined the unveiling of the angel. There would be Phoebe’s statue in the middle of a crowd of lobstermen, fishermen, and dockworkers. The real Phoebe in one of her fluttery dresses next to rich old Mr. Salviatti. May couldn’t think how to explain just how jagged a joke it could turn into. May said, “Maybe you should talk to Captain Teixeira. He’s been around forever. He’s practically the chief of the town dock. And he’d know something about angels, him being Catholic.”

“Funny you should mention him. I said to Piero it would make more sense to ask Sylvia Teixeira to be the model. She’s very pretty in a Portuguese sort of way. Maybe a little too sexy for an angel.” Phoebe popped her eyes open. “Weren’t she and Tom …?”

“No,” May said. “That was Charlie.”

“Really? I seem to remember seeing Tom and Sylvia walking up to Miss Perry’s.”

“Tom? When was that?”

“Right after Sylvia graduated from URI. Just before she went to Portugal—she finally did have to go, after all—but this was when she was still helping Miss Perry. I remember when she came back, the Teixeiras had a family party for her down on the town dock and she seemed to have a new beau, someone much older this time. But you’re right, we should talk with Captain Teixeira.”

For a moment May thought that Phoebe had mistaken Charlie for Tom. May had been picturing Miss Perry’s front steps and a boy and a girl, blurred by Phoebe’s saying “I seem to remember …” But when Phoebe said, “a new beau, someone older this time,” it was
like turning the focusing knob on a pair of binoculars, and May saw clearly. Not the Teixeiras’ party on the town dock but Tom and that pretty Portuguese girl.

Tom wouldn’t have … not if Charlie was still … But then Charlie held on to things, took a long time before he gave up. Tom thought each day was new. It’s what let him take to Rose without tying himself in a knot about where she came from. Charlie put out to sea. What would ever bring him back?

Phoebe didn’t seem to notice that May pulled back some. “Boats,” Phoebe said. “There’s something to do with boats I wanted to tell you. It’ll come to me. Did you hear about the smugglers? That’s not it, but it does have a boat. They were bringing in bales of marijuana and they stacked them in a hayfield and stacked real hay bales on top. But a bird-watcher who was up before dawn saw them in her nightscope. I love it—the little old lady in tennis shoes. Oh. I remember. The smugglers used a Zodiac to come in from the mother ship. It was near the oceanography school, so they probably thought people would think their Zodiac had something to do with the
Trident
. Anyway, I met the captain of the
Trident
, and he’s just crazy about Charlie. He said a lot of the researchers he takes out aren’t very handy with small boats. What he actually said was, ‘Some of them are piss-to-windward sailors.’ It took me a minute to figure it out. Have you ever heard that?”

“Yes. Often enough. What’d he say about Charlie?”

“He said Charlie’s the only scientist he trusts to handle the boat. One time the motor in the other Zodiac stopped working, and it was getting pushed onto some rocks, and Charlie drove his Zodiac right in next to them and towed the other boat. I’m not sure I understood everything the captain said, but apparently it was hard to do, what with the rocks and big waves. So Charlie’s a bit of a hero, like his father.”

Phoebe looked pleased. May shook her head. She’d been worrying about Charlie keeping away on account of his pain and anger at Dick, and Phoebe had added the possibility that Charlie was mad at Tom as well. May’d been thinking of Charlie as more or less safe on the
Trident
, but now there he was tearing around in a small boat. He
might have done the right thing, but he was most likely driven to it just to get even with his father. Men. Men wanting more … Now she had another man out at sea to worry about, thanks to Phoebe’s chirping.

It helped to blame Phoebe. Vain, flibbertigibbet Phoebe. May tried to be fair. Phoebe wanted to be her friend, came in to brighten the day, had no idea how she’d made it darker. All right, then—poor, fluttering Phoebe.

But what
was
she up to with Mr. Salviatti? Didn’t people ever get done with all that?

M
ary had become the person everyone told things to. Or had she always been that person? Come to think of it, yes, God help her. Rose told her about May and Tom, and how her uncle Jack fussed over her but then ignored her if a pretty woman came along. Eddie, God love him, was always a beat or two behind the rest of the band, at least when it came to that sort of tune. May hadn’t so much told Mary about Phoebe’s visits to Mr. Salviatti’s as
asked
, wanting to be reassured that her friend Phoebe wasn’t a bad person. May hoped that Mary could offer, from what everyone seemed to think was Mary’s large store of worldliness, an assessment of possibilities ranging from completely innocent to dangerously but not wickedly flirtatious.

As May questioned her, Mary had two trains of thought. The first was about May herself. Mary had always liked May, thought she was long-suffering—God knows Dick was a hard man to put up with, even to himself—but also that May had something in her that matched Dick’s fierceness, that he could live with. But listening to May worry about Phoebe, Mary heard a tone that made her wonder
if May wasn’t so much thinking of sexual urges with disapproval as thinking them not worth all that fuss.

Lord knows it could come to that.

The second train of thought was that Mary wondered just what Phoebe
was
doing up there in Mr. Salviatti’s grand house and walled garden all set about with Italian statues and fig trees. She’d pooh-poohed it to May by saying that Mr. Salviatti was a mysterious figure and that Phoebe was just the kind of person who couldn’t leave a mystery alone. Not so much actual mystery, which was much less his doing than the fact that he’d spent too much money setting himself up on his hill, above most of the county but not to the taste of the gentry. But they all still talked, and what Phoebe probably found irresistible was being one up on all the talk. And then, looking at Phoebe from Mr. Salviatti’s perspective, why wouldn’t an older man look forward to Phoebe’s pretty face and figure? Wasn’t there always a man or two lingering by the tennis court whenever Phoebe was playing? Just to take in the way she bent over to pick up a ball, not scooping it up with the edge of her racket but giving the ball a little pat to start it bouncing. “She knows how to add an ornament,” Mary said. “And what’s going on up there on the hill is most likely just ornamental.”

May narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips. Mary couldn’t tell if May was satisfied. Then May sighed and changed the subject. To Rose, of course. The subject of Rose softened May’s face, and the softening made her surprisingly beautiful, though not, Mary thought, in a way a man would notice.

A
pulling boat. Sixteen feet length overall, with a four-foot beam, narrow and fast. A bit tender. Two sets of oars. Dick said to Rose, “It’s not just because you never know. You can set her up to have two rowing stations. The middle thwart slides aft like so … and then you put the pegs in and she’s still trim with two rowers. Or you can row from the bow and take a passenger in the stern sheets.”